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Knowledge, literacy and media among the Iban of Sarawak. A reply to Maurice Bloch

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2003

John Postill
John Postill
Affiliation:
Bremer Institut für Kulturforschung (BIK), Universität Bremen, D–28334 Bremen, [email protected]
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Abstract

Maurice Bloch has rejected Jack Goody's ‘autonomous’ theory of literacy for being deterministic and eurocentric. The Merina of Madagascar, says Bloch, have adapted literacy to local purposes. Rather than altering their (oral) knowledge system, bringing it closer to European models, literacy has actually extended this system. In this article I apply Bloch's insight to another Austronesian people: the Iban of Sarawak. While agreeing that his indigenist ‘ideological’ approach is helpful in some cases (e.g. Christian prayer books that extend pagan notions of ancestry), it can also blind us to the wider realities of developing countries where literacy is both a ubiquitous ideal and an unevenly distributed resource. To overcome the ideological–autonomous impasse, I suggest (a) closer cooperation between literacy and media anthropology and (b) more geopolitical rigour when comparing social units.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Anthropology , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , February 2003 , pp. 79 - 99
Copyright
© 2003 European Association of Social Anthropologists

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this article was published in the Proceedings of the Sixth Biennial Conference of the Borneo Research Council. University of Malaysia, Kuching, 10–14 July 2000. The article follows from research I carried out in Sarawak for some 17 months in 1996–8 was part of a PhD thesis with the Anthropology Department at University College London, supervised by Dr Simon Strickland and Professor Chris Tilley. I was officially attached to both the Majlis Adat Istiadat (Council for Customary Law) and the Sarawak Museum in Kuching. My doctoral research was supported by the Anthropology Department and Graduate School at University College London, the Evans Fund of Cambridge University and the Central Research Fund of London University. I am most grateful to these institutions and to the Iban Service at RTM, Bahagian Teknologi Pendidikan, Tun Jugah Foundation, Betong District Office, State Planning Unit, as well as to countless individuals and families in the Saribas, Skrang and Kuching areas for their generous support. I also wish to thank two anonymous readers and Carlos Pi[barwed ]nas for their helpful comments.